Local librarian focuses on youth services

2/5/2025

Librarians are much more than what is portrayed in the media as “TV librarians,” Alissa Cornick, the youth services librarian at the South Side Library, said.

“They usually still have a ‘shushy’ librarian in there, and that’s just very much not what libraries are anymore. We really do seek to connect organizations, to connect people to the right services that they need in the community, and, if they can find it here, awesome,” Cornick said.

Cornick has been working at the South Side Library since 2019. Although she loves the job now, it wasn’t always her first choice. Before this, she was teaching college students at DMACC.

“I really liked working one on one with the kids, with their research projects, with the mechanics of writing. But I didn’t love being up in front of people all the time, and didn’t love the part where you have to grade papers all the time. I’m such a bad grader because I just want to give everyone an A,” Cornick said.

While in college, Cornick thoroughly enjoyed her time doing an assistantship at the school library. Her time there set her up to become a librarian after she moved on from teaching, earning a master’s degree in library and information science.

“I think one thing you find with quite a lot of librarians is we end up here from lots of different areas,” Cornick said. 

Cornick wears many hats at South Side. Aside from normal librarian tasks like making sure the book collections are healthy and up to date, she focuses on the youth programming offered. This includes sensory play hour (geared toward youth and families who have various sensory disorders or sensory sensitivities), teen volunteer programs, story times and partnership programs. These partnership programs help teach kids how to cook, about music, and, currently, the South Side branch is connecting kids with local artists. 

Cornick wants more people in the community to turn to the library when looking to connect with those around them. 

“I want people to know that we are a community center. Yes, it’s a library, and we have physical and digital things you can check out, and literacy is what we do, but the other thing is that we’re connective tissue, between the library, between people and the other resources in the community,” Cornick said.

She mentions a recent moment between her and a student who turned to the library for help with research for a project.

“She was working on a project for a poetry class. She came in and was like, ‘I don’t know where to start, and I’ve been really stressed out… I don’t know why it took so long for me to think of the library.’ It was a really good moment because I was able to take her over to where our poetry is and show her what kinds of books we have, what type of poetry. We were able to go through and have a conversation about, is this what you’re looking for? Is this what would work? If it isn’t, great, let’s go back to the drawing board and see what we can find for you,” Cornick said. “It was one of those moments where I was like, ‘Oh, this is so cool, because someone realized, wait a minute, there’s a place I can go to find these things.’ We tend to think everything is on the internet, and we can find everything that way, but the internet is a huge resource, and knowing how to navigate it is a lot harder than we think. We’re here. We’re an information hub.”

Librarians help people with a lot more than just checking out books or running programs as well. 

“I think a lot of folks don’t realize just how much we do in terms of helping people navigate government resources, whether that’s applying for a passport or dealing with Social Security, or applying for SNAP benefits or anything like that,” Cornick said.

Cornick, like most librarians, does enjoy a good book. While she used to have a large collection of books in her own home, she says the library acts as her home for books now. 

“Books are great, but they’re incredibly heavy, and they’re hard to store and hard to move. The library is a giant place to store your books. So, I always tell people, no reason to buy the book. Let us store it for you. You can just come and get it whenever you want, for free,” Cornick said.

One of the many reasons Cornick believes libraries are important, outside of the services she helps lead, is their role as a third space. 

“I think we don’t have a ton of places that are left, that are still fully for the community, that you are just allowed to come and be yourself in. And I think that is what the library is for a lot of people. You’re allowed to be here, and you’re allowed to be you here, and everything at the library is set up to be helpful for the community,” Cornick said. ♦